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How Movie Characters Should Look According To The Comics

It looks like 2016 is set to be the year that movies based on comic books really embrace costume accuracy. The amazingly accurate outfit featured in Deadpool set the standard, and both Black Panther and Spider-Man's duds in Captain America: Civil War look fantastic. But as excited as these comic-accurate looks have fans feeling, there are lots of page-to-screen adaptations that are just wrong. Sometimes ignoring characters' original designs is a pretty smart decision, while other times it's hard not to be bummed about the changes filmmakers make for the sake of "realism."

Wolverine

Back when Hugh Jackman first took the role of Wolverine in 2000's X-Men, it was impressive enough that he managed to accurately capture the essence of everyone's favorite clawed psychopath. It didn't much matter that, at 6'2", Jackman stands a full 11 inches taller than his diminutive comic book counterpart. But despite the fact that fans have loved the movie version of Wolverine for over a decade, he's still never appeared on-screen in his comic-accurate costume. C'mon, can't we even get the mask on his face? Just once?

Vibe

We can't really blame the producers of the CW's The Flash for not going so comic book accurate with this one. For one thing, Cisco Ramon, aka Vibe, is still discovering his powers on the show, and hasn't gone out to fight crime as a full-on superhero. Moreover, until a recent redesign, Vibe's comic book suit was pretty embarrassing, with its red handkerchief and V-neck collar that goes all the way down. Still, if the show keeps looking to score points for comic book accuracy, we have to point out that it's missed this one—even when it makes the smart choice by actually avoiding said accuracy.

Hawkeye

This is another instance where the filmmakers behind Hawkeye's big screen look made the right move—by moving away from the comics. Sure, Hawkeye's all-purple archery suit looks cool on the page, it'd be hard not to make it look ridiculous at the movie theater.

Superman

Lots of Superman haters have pointed to his costume as something in need of "fixing." With the yellow belt that holds nothing up, the red underpants on the outside, and the simple blue spandex, it's definitely a simple outfit, and one that hasn't changed much over the past century. But Christopher Reeve managed to make it look awesome in 1978's Superman, and all three of the sequels. That was proof enough that Superman's costume wasn't actually broken at all. Yet, for some reason, Zack Snyder insisted on making Superman's belt even weirder—and cover him in fish-scales?—for 2013's Man of Steel. Bring the underpants back, man.

Deadpool

Much ink has been spilled about how badly X-Men Origins: Wolverine's producers screwed up Deadpool: they take him out of his iconic costume, sew his mouth shut, and give him all the mutant powers they could stuff into one person. The good news, of course, is that it paved the way for 2016's Deadpool, which has broken new ground for faithful comic book adaptations (and for creative use of a unicorn doll in an R-rated movie).

Punisher

While it's not going to win any awards for being clever, the Punisher's costume is pretty memorable for exactly one reason: it has a gigantic white skull on it. So when the Dolph Lundgren-starring Punisher movie came out in 1989, what's the one thing the filmmakers decided to omit from the character's look? The gigantic white skull.

Mystique

As we've discussed, the producers of 2000's X-Men made some important choices to ensure that their team of mutants would look realistic on film. That meant cutting brightly-colored superhero costumes in favor of black leather. Whether or not that was a more believable costume choice is debatable. But there's no question that director Bryan Singer's move to change the look of Mystique is one of the more baffling adaptations in superhero movie history. For some reason, Singer insisted that the villain be covered in lizard scales and walk around naked all day long, despite there being no such corresponding look in the comics. Stranger still, the scales have stuck around from movie to movie and actress to actress, even though it looks truly bizarre and has no real reason to still be, like, a thing.